She slept badly, a dream she couldn’t get away from waking her and then grabbing her again the moment she closed her eyes. She was with Uncle in some Chinese city that was all dust, smoke, and exhaust fumes, and they were being chased down, running for their lives. He was moving slowly, limping when he wasn’t hopping on one leg. She felt the urge to run and had to hold back, though her energy was bursting. He kept telling her to leave, that he’d make it on his own. Every time she was at that point she’d wake, get up to pee and drink a glass of water, and then crawl back into bed hoping that the dream was over, only to have it return. Same city, different location, more thugs.
Dreams were common for her, but not dreams about Uncle. Usually it was her father who dominated her nighttime subconscious, in a recurring dream that had her desperately trying to connect with him and never succeeding. She wondered if keeping her presence in Hong Kong a secret had triggered Uncle’s intrusion into her sleep.
At seven she finally gave up and hauled herself out of bed. It was already light outside, the sun glinting through a light layer of clouds. She knew Victoria Park would be a zoo, but she needed to clear her head. She put on her running gear, stuck money for the MTR into her pocket, and headed downstairs.
The park was awful, both the inner and outer tracks so crowded that she could barely walk at a brisk pace, let alone run. So she gave in and walked around the park’s perimeter, taking in the multitude of tai chi practitioners, the old men with their birdcages, the badminton players, and at the southern end a throng who had come to exercise to the music of ABBA under the direction of one male and one female instructor, who loomed above them on a stage.
It was just past nine when she left the park and walked back to the MTR station. Hong Kong rush hour was in full bloom and an unbroken stream of people jostled on the station stairs in both directions. Ava knew what it would be like on the train, and the idea of being hemmed in so tightly that she wouldn’t be able to move her arms held no appeal for her. She figured it would take her about thirty minutes to run back to the hotel, and without further thought she headed down Gloucester Road.
Before the Mandarin Oriental became her hotel of choice, she had often stayed at the Grand Hyatt, near the old Star Ferry terminal. It was only a ten-minute jaunt from there to the park, and the route took her along Causeway Bay, past the Hong Kong Yacht Club, the noon cannon, and the typhoon shelter, which was perpetually filled with sampans that in turn were filled with floating families. She retraced those steps, enjoying the morning air.
When she got back to the hotel, she took a shower and got dressed for business. She turned on her cellphone and listened to messages from Uncle and her father. Uncle wanted her to phone him. Her father was concerned about how things were going.
She swore quietly as she closed the phone. She didn’t want to talk to Uncle just yet. She wanted to get the meeting behind her. Besides, she knew that if she did phone him the fact that she was in Hong Kong would emerge. She just couldn’t lie to him and found it almost impossible to say no to him. When she told this to Derek one time, he had just smiled and said she had the same effect on him.
She thought about calling her father before going to meet Michael, and then pushed the idea aside. She had nothing to tell him. She turned on her computer to take a quick look at where the meeting was scheduled, the City of Dreams. Five minutes later she was still reading, and her reluctance to go to Macau had almost vanished.
The first thing that had caught her attention were the names Ho and Packer, except the names were Lawrence Ho, not Stanley, and James Packer, not Kerry. James was the son of the late Australian tycoon; he was in his early forties and already ranked as one of the wealthiest men in Australia. Lawrence was still in his early thirties — one of Stanley Ho’s seventeen children from